Humans have a seemingly infinite capacity to worry. The problem is, with a near-infinite supply of things to worry about, we wind up fretting over problems that don’t exist.

One of these non-issues that keeps popping up is the idea that cell phones cause brain cancer. Despite there being study after study of cell-phone radiation showing no link at all to brain damage, and despite there being no physical way a cell phone can cause brain damage, people still worry about it.

If you run across someone who believes this, now you have a place to send them: a video of a talk at a National Capitol Area Skeptics meeting, where Professor Christopher Davis (from the University of Maryland’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering) totally destroys these claims. It’s a full-length talk, but it’s all online. Here’s part 1:

1) People fret when they hear the word radiation, but there are lots of kinds of radiation, most of which is harmless.

2) One type of radiation is plain ol’ light. Radio waves are radiation. Microwaves are radiation. These types of radiation are essentially harmless.

3) The type of radiation cell phones emit is on the borderline between radio and microwave light.

4) Not only is the type of radiation from cell phones harmless, the amount of it is too small to hurt us. Regulations set the power of cell phones far, far lower than levels known to be even borderline noticeable.

5) There have been many careful studies looking at any connection between cell phones and health risks. None has been found. Note: this means direct risk, not things like phoning while driving, while using a buzz saw, while running from zombies, and so on.

6) Cell phone use has exploded worldwide, with hundreds of millions of users. Yet the rate of brain cancer detection has been steady for years. If there were even a tiny connection, we’d see a dramatic increase in brain disease. We don’t.

I love people who call up their favorite radio talk show and complain about all the radiation from their cell phones, and how it will give them cancer, not knowing that the radio waves going to their radio are far more powerful.

Unfortunately north of me in San Francisco the city council is requiring all cell phones to be sold with labels the disclose the amount of “radiation” each cell phone puts out. It is meaningless information that the average consumer doesn’t understand.

Plus, it is a governing body saying: “this is dangerous” which the loonies will then use as proof.

Granted you can counter with the fact that the SFCC wants to ban toys from happy meals, so they are pretty nuts.

“The World Health Organization (WHO) announced that long-term use of cell phones may be linked to elevated risk of some types of brain issues. The conclusion, which is reportedly still inconclusive, is derived from a landmark international study overseen by the WHO that has lasted for decades.

The results, though not entirely conclusive, clearly have concerned the WHO. Its head, Dr. Elizabeth Cardis, is quoted as saying “In the absence of definitive results and in the light of a number of studies which, though limited, suggest a possible effect of radio-frequency radiation, precautions are important.” There is particular concern regarding use by children, as their thinner skulls are less likely to shield the brain from harmful frequencies. “

Ok cell phones don’t cause cancer ,but playing video games for a long peoid of time on one can cause eye strain and driving while talking on one can cause car crashes (like the jerk who was talking on his ,ran a red light , speeding , and slamed into the back of my brothers car last month fortunetly neather of us was hurt) . I think there is a big and sometimes unresionable fear of radiation in this country , I think it comes form years of scifi movies about radiation makeing mutant monsters and turning people into zombies or superheros.And also fear of nuclear attack .

I love people who call up their favorite radio talk show and complain about all the radiation from their cell phones, and how it will give them cancer, not knowing that the radio waves going to their radio are far more powerful.

Sure, but how can the radio waves be a problem? After all, they’re going in to the radio, not out like with the cell phone!

Point 5). It would be great if at least the sceptic side of a debate would actually go and link a few references whenever they pull the “many studies show” argument. Because until you do, it’s exactly as good as “many people say”.

It irks me when sceptics demand that purveyors of nonsense back their reasoning with scientific evidence, but fail to do so themselves.

As for other points…

6) Cell phones haven’t been around nearly long enough to truly determine the long term effects of constant exposure.

4) Why exactly is the “sort of radiation” cell phones use totally harmless? Btw. in my book that would mean that it causes no observable effect on human body – even on the cellular level. If there are measurable changes, then that means potential effects which means potential undesired effects.

Now, I’ve been using a cellphone longer than you folks in the US have even known they exist, but I don’t buy your arguments.

Seems like I read an article very recently that said there was a medical study showing that there was an increased chance of rashes due to an allergic reaction to the nickel used in cell phones. A rash is a long way from cancer, but I can see a new wave of mindless panic brewing.

“Sure, but how can the radio waves be a problem? After all, they’re going in to the radio, not out like with the cell phone! :-)”

That’s hilarious!

The best analogy I’ve found for explaining this to people is to compare it to wind, though I know it’s not the most accurate method. When I tell them the type of radiation is too weak to do any harm, then they mention that it’s the amount of exposure over the long term. So I tell them that wind can blow their house down in the form of a hurricane or tornado, but a cell phone is the equivalent of someone blowing out a candle. No matter how long they stand with their nose an inch from your walls, blowing and blowing and blowing, it is not ever, under any circumstances, going to blow your house down. It’s not even going to chip the paint.

Thank you Phil, for commenting on this issue! I know some very rational people who still worry about stuff like this. It ticks me off – there are so many GOOD things to worry about out there, we really don’t need to go making up new ones!

@#3 Patrick: Even better, not long ago I heard a radio HOST talking about how he thought “cell phone electromagnetic radiation” (ooo, the R word) caused all manner of health problems…
Meanwhile, he’s sitting about 15 feet from a 10,000 watt transmitter
The transmitter is about 50 years old. It was definitely built before people started worrying about this stuff. I’ll bet it’s quite leaky by modern EM standards. I used to intern at that station, as a matter of fact, and the magnetic fields from the transmitter caused CRTs 20 feet away to show weird pink discoloration patterns. I wonder how much stronger the radio frequencies, where that guy was sitting, were then those from a cell phone? 100,000 times? A million?

1. The claim that radio waves going to the car radio are stronger than those going to your brain from your cell phone is absolutely false. It is not the case that the car radio wave flux *at your ear* is higher than the cell phone flux *at your ear*. This claim is off by more than 6 orders of magnitude. Here’s the calculation:

2. It’s true that it’s not easy to imagine a mechanism by which non-ionizing radiation leads to cancer. On the other hand,
(a) Biology is complicated, and non-obvious things happen all the time. There’s a long history of people who think that biological systems are simpler than they in fact turn out to be undertaking actions that seem logical but that have hidden consequences. It’s good to be wary of thinking that we understand biological systems too well. It’s good to rely on data, not theory.
(b) Microwaves cook food, so they can change the nature of proteins. Could they change the structure of DNA too? I don’t know, and I don’t think anyone else knows a priori either. It’s an empirical question, not a theoretical one.
(c) Some studies (e.g. Repacholi 1997: http://bit.ly/f1xOrt ) indicate that mice get cancer at a higher rate when exposed to cell phone radiation than when not. Other studies do not confirm this link.

In my mind, it’s an open question, but there’s no strong evidence that human cell phone use causes cancer on timescales of 10 years. What about on timescales of 40 years? The experiment hasn’t been done, so we don’t know yet.

3. The studies of the safety of airport scanners are not conclusive at all. The power is down from standard chest X-rays by a factor of roughly a 1000, but the interaction probability per cell is up by a large factor too. Probably not a factor of 1000, but people fly much more often than they get chest X-rays. It’s not obvious to me that they are acceptably safe.

(Someone please correct me if I get some of the following wrong, but here’s my understanding.) The radiation emitted by green light photons (240 kJ/mole, with a mole containing 6.023×10 to the 23rd power photons) is approximately 24,000 times more powerful than that emitted by cell phones (.001 kJ/mole). Green light does not cause cancer. Ultraviolet light is twice as powerful as green light (480 kJ/mole) and is known to cause cancer. If by merely reducing by half puts us in a safe zone, then reducing by another factor of 24,000 should really do the trick.

Side note: How on earth do you write superscript in this comment window? It would be nice not to have write “10 to the 23rd power.)

@#4 Jamesonian: Eh? “the conclusion, which is reportedly still inconclusive”?
See, that’s the problem right there. They’ve been studying this for decades, but many, many studies have shown no harmful effects. That’s not to say that no effects exist, but obviously, if an effect DOES exist, it must be so small that the signal is almost lost in the noise. It’s easy to zap lab rats with microwaves, so it’s not as if this is the sort of thing you need the Large Hadron Collider to do research – anyone can do it.

I found another interesting study: Cell phone use may protect against or even reverse Alzheimers
Am I going to build a microwave gun and point it at my head to make sure I don’t get Alzheimers? No. But it just goes to show that biological EM effects, IF they do exist at all, are tiny, and difficult to detect.

Can anyone point me towards some studies that talk about cell phone TOWER radiation? My mother had an issue where she worked, where a number of people were having cancers and brain tumours, and they tested the cell phone towers that were at the top of the building. (They tested for a day, and they could have turned off the towers at any time without notifying anyone. To me, that doesn’t really constitute proper testing, considering people worked 9-5, for at least 10 years, sitting under these towers)

I’m sure the science is good and all, but the above situation has made me skeptical about it. I’d like to read more about it.

Ok, before anyone snarks at me about post 15, I KNOW that there’s a difference between a standing magnetic field and RF radiation, and a substantial difference in frequency between AM radio and cell phone signals, which are low in the microwave band IIUC. Same difference, though. At the frequencies and powers cell phones operate at, you have no substantial heating, no ionizing radiation, no diamagnetic or dielectric effects. I’m certainly not discounting that powerful low-frequency EM fields can’t ever be shown to have some biological effects, but that’s as different from cell phone emissions as cell phone emissions are from X-rays.

I used to have a ham radio license, so I made good and sure to read up on safety.

Long ago when I was researching longwave bio-interaction, I did not find much research in the US – but there was a large body of USSR literature on the subject. The data was not conclusive, but it was not just conjecture either.

Not that I believe cell-phones cause cancer as compared to other thousands of FDA-approved products, I would first want to know who is sponsoring the Prof.

Regarding brain disease data: It look decades and a Rachel Carson to show DDT was not like mother’s milk. Asbestos was harmless too. Only in USA GMO is harmless, rBGH is harmless – these don’t even can be mentioned without inviting lawsuits, just for consumer information. If you go to EU, GMO and growth hormones will kill you. Maybe global warming will kill me before the cell phone does!

E = hf, where E is energy, h is Planck’s constant (a REALLY tiny number), and f is frequency.
Radio waves have really small frequencies, and thus carry really small energies. So even if your tissues could absorb these frequencies (which, for the most point, they don’t–see below), the amount of energy they would deliver would be minuscule.

@Romulus Von Flex (#11):
“…our bodies are 94% empty space and the waves are small enough that they pass right though us.”

Errm, not quite.

The point that our bodies are mostly empty space is correct (although how, exactly, you define “empty space” is arguable–does the electron’s probability cloud “fill” space, and if so, how much? It’s a bit like asking how much space Earth’s gravity “fills up.”).

However, the fact that low frequency (long wavelength) radiation (e.g. radio waves) pass right through us without depositing appreciable energy is because the laws of physics say that waves only interact strongly with objects that are roughly the same size or bigger than the wavelength. Those little perforations in the metal screen of a microwave oven’s door are way smaller than the microwaves (whose wavelengths are 12.2 cm), so the microwaves “see” the screen as solid and reflect right off, whereas the light waves (being much tinier) go right through the holes, allowing you to see inside without any microwaves escaping.

Cell phones in the U.S. operate on frequencies between 800 MHz and 1900 MHz, corresponding to radiation with wavelengths between 0.2 and 0.4 meters. That’s 20,000 to 40,000 times larger than a typical animal cell, where the energy would have to be absorbed to cause cell damage and thus, cancer. In other words, cell phone radiation ignores your cells the same way water waves go right past an anchor chain like it wasn’t even there (because the anchor chain is tiny compared to the wavelength of the waves). If you want to prove it, try using your cell phone from the bottom of a rugby scrum–all those bodies above you can’t absorb enough radio energy to attenuate the signal one whit.

Sure, but how can the radio waves be a problem? After all, they’re going in to the radio, not out like with the cell phone!

Not that I’m intending to add any validity whatsoever to the insanity surrounding cell phones and wi-fi, but the the whole “going in rather than out” thing actually borders on valid reasoning.

Specifically, I’m referring to the inverse-square law. In this scenario, it can be described as “the intensity of electromagnetic waves radiating from a point source is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from that source”. In other words, a location two miles away from such a point source would receive one-fourth of the energy as a location one mile away. Since the radio is receiving and not transmitting, its location relative to you is meaningless for determining how much EM radiation is passing through — what matters is your distance to the broadcasting tower.

That said, cell phone towers tend to have a much shorter signal range than radio broadcasting towers, so even ignoring the whole “non-ionizing radiation” aspect, you’re probably going to get hit with a lot more energy if you live near a radio station than your cell phone could ever hope to put out. And I’m pretty sure there’s no correlation between radio station proximity and cancer rates.

IMO, the desire to propagate such nonsense as “cell phones cause cancer” is a classic symptom of paranoia. “They” are out to get me because “I” am so important. “I” am so wonderful I know magical secrets that “regular” people don’t. Conspiracies exist for the same reason religion does. People are desperate to be special snowflakes.

I still have a soft spot for that station, and the people who work there are great, but yeah, the BS quotient seems to be rising steadily. Now they have Alex “OMG the pigs are watching my every move” Jones, for chrissakes. I wrote them an angry letter over that one. I stopped listening much after that.

@#26 vel: That’s not the ONLY motivation for conspiracy theories, but yeah, I agree that it’s probably pretty darn high up the list. It’s a great feeling to have hidden knowledge, and vast conspiracies tend to mean that a lot of people are willing to sacrifice their principles for money, so by being a conspiracy theorist, you get to feel morally superior to others without actually doing anything to deserve it.
I have some familiarity with the subject, as I spent several years when I was young trying to figure out how to determine how many extraterrestrials were imprisoned in Area 51. I wish I were joking.
By the way, you don’t happen to post on Fark, by any chance, do you?

When someone brings up this brain cancer – cell phone issue with me, I point out that your ear is much closer to the cell phone than your brain is. So why have we not seen a rise in ear cancers due to cell phone use?

“You’re just naive. I do believe that these companies are trying to cover this up.”

Ask them why they believe this. What grounds do they have to conclude that a coverup exists? Not why they think the companies have a motive to cover up something like this were it actually happening, but why they think the companies actually are covering it up. If they insist on only providing a motive, ask them if they would be happy if they were convicted of a crime based only on the fact that they had a motive to commit the crime, without any evidence that the crime had even occurred.

not knowing that the radio waves going to their radio are far more powerful.

Er… not to side with the cell phone = cancer people, but your radio is a receiver very far from the radio station. They are powerful at the transmitting antenna, but at your radio… not so much. The cell phone is a transmitter touching your head.

Btw. in my book that would mean that it causes no observable effect on human body – even on the cellular level. If there are measurable changes, then that means potential effects which means potential undesired effects.

You need to look for specific effect. If you get too general, you realize wearing a sweater makes you warm by trapping heat and making your cells vibrate more at the atomic level! Gasp! BAN SWEATERS!

Now, I’ve been using a cellphone longer than you folks in the US have even known they exist, but I don’t buy your arguments.

The first practical mobile phone arose from a tech race between Motorola and Bell Labs.

And the first US automated cell system happened only 2 years after ones in Europe. It was more of a demand issue than any technical issues. It’s also just easier to put cell systems into those tiny, tiny little European countries (or Japan, which predated Europe’s system by 2 years because they needed a way to control all the giant robots). Here in the US we have vast stretched of untrammeled land where you can still get good coverage. Well, near the highways, anyway.

The guy asking questions in part 4, and keeps citing pongresearch.com, is so annoying.

I also get really pissed off that people will so happily dismiss scientific expertise. If I challenged or dismissed the expertise of a plumber or a carpenter or an electrician, I would get punched in the face. And rightly so.

i hear that cell phones can cause colorectal blockage in people that spout nonsense about radiation scares. apparently it is from getting their cell phoned shoved up their…whoops, look at the time. i gotta go.

@32 Itzac: Oh my lard. That pongresearch site would be a laugh riot if people weren’t actually paying for this thing. Even if cell phones DID cause cancer, would you trust these people to protect you? Quotes from the site:

“Without Pong, your cell phone antenna emits radiation in all directions, both to the outside and toward your head.

The Pong technology module, optimally aligned with the phone’s internal antenna, attracts the radiative energy. The Pong Effect occurs as a pure energy transfer with no distortion due to the properties of the module material and microwave-tuned antenna design.
Chimney Effect
The unique “ladder” configuration of the Pong module moves the signal and its hazardous radiation through the Pong case like a chimney, and away from the user.”

Pong effect? Ladder? Chimney? “Attracts” the “radiative energy”? Wtf??
I don’t even have the patience to go through that one chunk of text and highlight everything ridiculous.

I really don’t understand the reasoning. The electromagnetic spectrum is HUGE. Most of it is harmless. Of those frequencies that are not harmless, most of those need to be encountered under certain conditions to be harmful. While talking on a cell phone, you are being doused with radiation from stars and, for half the day, radiation from the sun. You are breathing in radioactive material. You are using electric appliances emitting radiation. You are absolutely surrounded by energy waves that are colliding with and passing through your body. RNA is very fragile, and life long ago learned to protect it from much more energetic radiation than a cell phone offers.

When you tell me a cell phone may be dangerous, I agree in the way I agree that an unsupervised candle is a fire hazard in a volcano, but not the fire hazard any sane person would care about.

You want to worry? Right now, there is a bacterium on your body that can cause necrotizing fasciitis, and yes, it’s as nasty as it sounds. Each time you press a key to respond to this post, you risk pushing that bacteria into a tiny cut or nick, exactly what it’s waiting for. The tin-foil hat might make you feel safe from cell phones and the CIA, but it won’t save you from the cocci! Now you have REAL fears.

Dark Jaguar Said“You’re just naive. I do believe that these companies are trying to cover this up.”

This is why it is a waste of time to cite studies showing no problems from cell phones. You can talk about the science until you’re blue in the face and STILL people won’t hear you. The same goes for anti-vaccination concerns too.

Many people have lost faith in large public institutions.

Until that faith is restored you can do all the math you like, cite all the research you want, it won’t make a bit of difference for some people. Though granted you might reach a few.

My goodness, the lot of you.
You are using Pseudo-Science to debunk Pseudo-Science then get up onto your high horse.
Many of you don’t seem to understand how electromagnetic waves work.

#1 @Phil, these spectra are not ‘essentially harmless’
Yes to everyday situations you do not have to worry about them. But there is great danger when dealing with powerful sources. Especially since, at some frequencies, you get heated from the inside. This is a very bad situation because most of your sensory nerves are on your skin, so you can receive internal burns without feeling much. Amateur ham sets can be powerful enough to require precautions.

Some frequencies do get to your skin, the military have developed those into ‘pain rays’. You may encounter one yourself at your next civil disturbance!

@11 Romulus
Point 4.)
The smaller the waves are, the MORE LIKELY they are to interact with you. This is extremely important! We use extremely low frequencies to communicate with submarines because the waves will pass through the earth. At some frequency we start cooking your body inside out. As the frequency is increased, the waves are absorbed earlier and earlier in your body. Then the atmosphere is nice enough to absorb the frequencies before they get to you. Then we get to light, which is pretty much stopped by your skin, which is why UV only causes skin cancer. After that is ionizing radiation which starts knocking things out of whack on an atomic scale which most definitely is a bad thing.

Basically when radiation at cell phone frequency is interacting with your body, molecules are being excited. Increasing the power, at some point, its clearly bad. But to definitively claim that IT DOESN’T CAUSE CANCER using hand wavy arguments is terrible method. Yeah I know, after the millionth energy bracelet or energy cube made out of fiberglass, you tend to get a sort of ‘1000 yard think’. This really does require further study, not only to see if the effect is there (does it really never never ever cause cancer?) but also to set safe levels for drafts of future regulations. In the future, more frequencies will open up for broadcast of information. We need to know for sure – otherwise the devices underperform or we get hurt.

MRIs are orders of magnitude lower frequency than cell phones just FYI.
It is counter productive to use an argument to say that cell phones are safe because its different frequency from bad radiation – but then directly compare it to a machine that uses a totally different frequency. And uses a different waveform.

Has any one study/peer reviewed research provided empirical data to conclude with finality that their research proves once and for all that the radiation emitted by cell phones does not cause any harm what-so-ever to the brain or living tissue? Please cite a reference for this study if one exists. Using logic to prove a point is one thing, actually proving it is another. As far as I know, every research simply SUGGESTS with a certain level of confidence that their data does not show cell phone use to be harmful to human or other living tissue. An opinion from a researcher is just that – an opinion. The cited researcher’s collective summary of research is merely that – suggestive. Can he in his right mind say that he has truly explored every possible permutation, combination of research possible, now and in the future, to come to this conclusion that cell phone use is not harmful to living tissue? I think statements made with such finality and conclusiveness are childish at best. We have way too much to learn about the effect of radiation on living tissue to to make statements that are so far fetched.

Anyone who claims to have learned every possible thing about any subject that can possibly be learned is either cocky, or has reached the threshold of what is available as knowledge today, or both. However, as far as science is concerned, knowledge is dynamic. What you know today changes, or is supplemented by new information with the advancement of time. In such a dynamic environment where information is constantly being updated/supplemented, how is it possible to make such sweeping statements?

I can accept statements such as – “… based on current research there is a certain degree of probability that cell phone usage may not cause harm ….. “. But to say – “No, cell phone usage does not cause harm”, is laughable and juvenile.

Clearly Mike, you’re absolutely right. I’m sure in the course of Prof. Davis’ studies and work he’s never learned anything about electromagnetism, the properties of EM radiation, the quantum mechanical basis for the different types of interactions between EMR and matter, or any of the thermodynamics involved. It’s not like most of that material is covered in any modern bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. That probably explains why he didn’t cover any of the stuff you said in his talk.

Phil, Thanks for sharing. The evidence is compelling and I agree with the results presented by Professor Davis. The one area I don’t think was covered well enough was the claim that thousands of studies support no effect and only and handful of studies find an effect, and combine that with an assertion that it doesn’t matter if the studies are industry-funded because the funding agreement allows the scientists to publish accurate results no matter what they are. If I knew that all of the thousands of studies that found no effect were industry-funded, and all of the studies that found an effect were independent of industry, I would be suspicious.

I have not seen so much nonsense, pooled together, as on this web site, in the article and most of the comments. You people did not do your homework, you are clueless, you have no idea what you are writing about but babble about non ionizing radiation and display an amazing show of ignorance.

Non ionizing radiation is harmful and has a wide range of biological effects. Moreover, it is used in clinical medicine, exactly by virtue of those biological effects.

But it is clear from the article above that is poorly conceived, and filled with factual mistakes and deception. The author is in fact misrepresenting the known scientific facts and provides the readership with selective pieces which fit his hypothesis. We call that, in science, misconduct.

A piece of advice, sit down and do your homework before playing expert. You need to become informed before informing others, it is not just common sense, but also ethical and professional.

The article above is misleading, unprofessional, and bring disservice to the community. Thanks.

On that press release from the “Acoustic Neuroma Association”, quoting the World Health Organization, here’s one perspective:

“A large number of studies have been performed over the last two decades to assess whether mobile phones pose a potential health risk. To date, no adverse health effects have been established for mobile phone use.”

“despite there being no physical way a cell phone can cause brain damage”…Phil Plait is totally wrong and uninformed in the above article. There are ways that cell phones cause brain damage. They are in the biomedical and medical literature, anyone who is interested can read them. There are several studies, from various groups worldwide, and their findings have been repeated, reproduced, and validated. It is only in the minds of ignorant people, that this is still an issue. Most medical and health professionals known that non ionizing radiation affects the brain, and non ionizing radiation is, in fact, being used therapeutically. The authors needs to learn science and learn ethics, before spreading lies.

@ Mike: Yes, at certain frequencies, with certain power levels, we can cook meat. What does that have at all to do with these frequencies, these power levels, and cancer? You are jumping from certain forms of radiation at certain power levels causing heating to other frequencies at much, much lower power levels causing cancer. You need to establish a link between the two, these sorts of bait-and-switch tactics don’t go over too well here.

I should add that MRIs are specifically designed to interact with the body, while cell phones aren’t (in fact the less cell phones interact with the body the better they perform, Apple recently learned that the hard way).

Also, MRI frequencies are in the tens or maybe hundreds of MHz, while cell phones are in the hundreds or low thousands of MHz, so only 1-1.5 orders of magnitude.

@ SR: Please provide a study proving once and for all that anything “does not cause any harm what-so-ever to the brain or living tissue”. How, in principle, could you ever conduct such a study? At a certain point, though, the evidence becomes strong enough that we can treat it as effectively proven.

MRI is performed over the duration of a few minutes. The cell phone is a radio frequency emitting device that some people hold by their brain 6 hours a day, and they do not switch it off for the remaining 18 hours, when it is next to their bodies.

And there is *no* study showing that there is no harm, because such a study was not conducted for long term effects. People are being exposed to something that was not tested, this is like taking a drug without running clinical trials to see adverse effects. But from short term studies, we know for example that cell phone exposures as short as 1 hour, change the expression of proteins in the cells! This was performed in humans, in vivo, and it shows harm.

It’s disturbing to witness a sanctimonious attitude from people condemning this paranoia when that attitude is accompanied by basic scientific misunderstandings and unwillingness to engage in good faith on the merits. It’s almost always a mistake to make an argument from authority, always a mistake to make an ad-hominem attack, and *necessary* to do the homework of attempting to disprove your own point before you try to express it.

A few points that may not have been made yet:

To the person who brought up “ear cancer”: you need to think about this argument more. You might start by searching for *any* references to “ear cancer” in medical history and comparing it to the number of references for brain cancers. Some tissues, obviously, are more susceptible than others.

How long have *children* been commonly using cell phones? If children are at greater risk, that risk (like that of skin cancer from sun exposure) may not fully manifest until we have a large cohort we’ve observed for many years if not decades.

An extremely small risk is still something both manufacturers and consumers should know about.

The INTERPHONE study published in http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/39/3/675.abstract also was written up as “inconclusive,” yet did show that brain tumors were more likely on the same side as users habitually held their phones, and this ipsilateral:contralateral ratio increased with the frequency of phone usage (more than twice as likely ipsilateral among the heaviest users). Theoretically, there could be a confounding factor that’s responsible for this association, but that’s still exactly the type of effect we’d expect to see if holding an active cell phone up to one’s head introduced a slight elevation of cancer risk.

Also, FYI, here in the US we do not permit MRI scans on women who are or might be pregnant unless they are medically necessary (no research scans allowed). This might also be an illogically reactionary policy (and as far as I know is not widely followed in Europe), but it shows that regulators are indeed concerned with inconclusive risks.

Personally, if I’m having a long conversation, I use a headset. More comfortable anyway, and even if the risk of brain cancer is zero or near-zero, it’s still brain cancer.

I hear they cause sterility if you keep ‘em in your pocket (but the vibrator function is sooo goooooood).

The last time I checked, microwaves were still considered radio waves – they just have very small (“micro”) wavelengths. The reception and detection techniques used for longer wavelength radio signals are still used with microwaves though some care has to be taken; the short wavelengths also allow neat tricks which are impractical for the much longer wavelength radios. Things get fuzzy somewhere in the sub-millimeter band where there is an overlap between techniques generally used for light detection and techniques generally used for radio detection – that’s simply due to the fact that it’s all electromagnetic radiation but characteristics do change with frequency and it’s not unusual that some intermediate range can be found where two different sets of techniques work equally well (or equally poorly).

A significant number of neurosurgeons are supporting calls to issue health warnings on potential links between mobile phone usage and brain cancers… they are at the ‘coal face’ so-to-speak and while it might not be an true scientific / statistical or longitudinal study it is enough for me to tone done my mobile phone use (or use the speaker phone rather than hold to my head…).

Very interesting topic, I haven’t yet have the time to view the videos but I will. I am personally a little concerned about the effects of long time exposure. Escpecially since I have heard of scientific studies that (supposedly) has proved that during radition exposure the blood-brain barrier temporarly loses its function to protect the brain from checmicals entering into the brain. If that is true this could have in the long term increase the risks for diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
Will be interesting to see if the blood-brain barrier topic is covered and what is said about it.

Number six is really the only argument you need. Most people aren’t experts on the effects of electromagnetic radiation on brain neurons, and you could debate it (and many do) until the cows come home. But in the end the fact that there is NO correlation in practice between cell phone use and brain disease is definitive proof that there is no effect (at least not a harmful one)…

Whilst I am an avid fan of yours Phil, I’m a bit surprised at what you wrote for point number 2 – namely:

“2) One type of radiation is plain ol’ light. Radio waves are radiation. Microwaves are radiation. These types of radiation are essentially harmless.”

No radiation is essentially harmless, ionising or not.

Plain ol’ light can cause permanent blindness if you are foolish enough to stare directly at the sun for example. Concentrate it under a lens and you can burn things. Build a visible spectrum laser and we soon see what that wavelength of radiation can do.

Radio waves can cause RF burns or dielectric heating once the transmitter is powerful enough. You really don’t want to be standing in front of an airport radar or hold onto a military radio backpack antenna – which is how an acquaintance of mine lost a finger from the internal burns.

Microwaves? Again there’s good reason you shouldn’t be standing in front of high powered microwave transmitters. This is why they are used as cooking devices.

Perhaps to give a more appropriate simile what would happen if we moved Earth into Mercury’s orbit? I think we’d see some pretty direct harm from the combined non-ionising radiation which penetrated the atmosphere!

Of course all of the above (save for sun-blindness) are examples of radiation transmitted at a higher power than normally experienced by everyday folk, well beyond what is produced by a mobile phone. However it would be nice if Point 2 was modified to include a caveat…

2) One type of radiation is plain ol’ light. Radio waves are radiation. Microwaves are radiation. At low power, as normally encountered in everyday life, these types of ambient radiation are essentially harmless.

-Dude1 “I KNOW what I’m talking about and I’m telling you cell phones DO cause cancer!”
-Dude2 “No, you don’t know what you’re talking about, I DO, and they DON’T cause cancer!”
-Dude3 “Shut up both of you, you both don’t know what you’re talking about, I DO, and cell phones kinda do but don’t really cause cancer, but MAYBE”
-Dude4 “This is all nonsense! I have cancer I never used a cell phone!”
-Dude5 “YOU ARE ALL WRONG BUT I DON’T KNOW WHY!”

Hi. So, does (or can) cell phones cause cancer or not? Everybody is saying nobody knows what they’re talking about. For someone who doesn’t know anything about radio waves (that would be me) reading all those comments is terrible. All I get from this is, “It definitely doesn’t cause cancer but it might cause cancer or help develop cancer, but it probably doesn’t, BUT we can’t prove it EITHER WAY…”

So basically, just wait a few years and see if you get cancer, you might be able to blame it on cell phones… OR NOT.

It’s James Randi appearing on the Aussie ABC-TV current affairs talk show ‘The Drum’ talking about skepticism, playing magic tricks and, among other things mentioning his personal doubt on AGW plus adding he’s not a climatologist or expert on the topic. Interesting and amusing.

Sorry I can’t seem to isolate the Randi segement which is right at the end coming in at the 29 minute mark of a 40 minute video which willonly be up for 13 days apparently. Afraid I couldn’t find a transcript or anything either, saw it live earlier tonight myself.

Its followed by this Aussie shows take on Sarah Palin possibly running for president if that’s of interest for folks to know too.

PS. BA, I’d send you this as an email or facebook message instead of here if I felt more confident you’d recieve it. Not sure whether you’re getting some of the things I’ve sent you – are you? Please let me know. Hope this is okay to mention here & apologies if not.

I love people who call up their favorite radio talk show and complain about all the radiation from their cell phones, and how it will give them cancer, not knowing that the radio waves going to their radio are far more powerful.

Well, yes and no.

In tems of absolute radiated power, a commercial radio station is many times more powerful than a cellphone.

In terms of local field strength, a cellphone probably generates a higher local field strength in your head when you hold it to your ear than does a commercial transmitter that may be many tens of miles away (or much farther for medium- or short- wave, as opposed to VHF, radio).

The BBC World Service (long wave?) uses about 500 kW, but that can be received more or less anywhere in the world (IIUC). So, at your receiver, the field strength could be pretty high (if you’re, say, 2 miles from the transmitter) or quite low (if you’re, say 2,000 miles from the transmitter).

The field strength generated by a cellphone will also vary according to how clearly your phone “hears” the base station of the cell to which it is connected (this is one of the ways in which cellphones conserve battery life – by using only as much power as they need to to comunicate with the base station). So the same phone could generate field strengths in your head that vary by a couple of orders of magnitude, depending on the transmission conditions.

To the person who brought up “ear cancer”: you need to think about this argument more. You might start by searching for *any* references to “ear cancer” in medical history and comparing it to the number of references for brain cancers. Some tissues, obviously, are more susceptible than others.

For someone who berates people for not understanding the science, you obviously didn’t actually bother to do this search yourself. I did. I get 412,000 hits. The first was “Cancer of the ear: a report of 150 cases”, and was from 1960.

That being said, the skin is very susceptible to cancer, probably more than the brain due its very high rate of cell division, so the skin of the ear should be much more prone to developing cancer than the brain due to its proximity. Cartilage is less likely to produce cancer, due to its low rate of cell division, but cartilage can still get cancer.

The INTERPHONE study published in [snip] also was written up as “inconclusive,” yet did show that brain tumors were more likely on the same side as users habitually held their phones, and this ipsilateral:contralateral ratio increased with the frequency of phone usage (more than twice as likely ipsilateral among the heaviest users).

Wait, so you don’t trust studies that haven’t been following people for decades, but you DO have at least some confidence in results that scientists themselves did not have much confidence in, based on a phone survey using personal recollection, and which the authors admit had both a biased sample and poor recollection by subjects?

Theoretically, there could be a confounding factor that’s responsible for this association, but that’s still exactly the type of effect we’d expect to see if holding an active cell phone up to one’s head introduced a slight elevation of cancer risk.

Here is what the authors themselves say: “There were suggestions of an increased risk of glioma at the highest exposure levels, but biases and error prevent a causal interpretation. ”

Despite your attempts to downplay the problems with the study, the results show there is something seriously wrong with their methodology. You have to remember, this is a phone survey of people who know they have cancer. People have been hearing that cell phones cause cancer for years. Has it occurred to you that when people are called about having cancer and their cell phone use they might subconsciously emphasize their cell phone usage because of the media reports? Such a study is almost, if not entirely, impossible to control.

The results, though not entirely conclusive, clearly have concerned the WHO. Its head, Dr. Elizabeth Cardis, is quoted as saying “In the absence of definitive results and in the light of a number of studies which, though limited, suggest a possible effect of radio-frequency radiation, precautions are important.”

There is a difference between being concerned and being careful. It seems to me that, in the absence of conclusive data and with the suggestion of a potential link, the WHO is applying the precautionary principle.

There is particular concern regarding use by children, as their thinner skulls are less likely to shield the brain from harmful frequencies.

I was under the impression that children were potentially more vulnerable because their brains have not finished developing, not because their skulls are thinner.

It irks me when sceptics demand that purveyors of nonsense back their reasoning with scientific evidence, but fail to do so themselves.

In most cases, the data supporting the sceptics’ side is available in the scientific literature. You make a generalisation here that I think is worth addressing: your turn of phrase implies that you observe this approach in many different cases where sceptics are arguing against woo.

Consider this:
Where the relevant experts (scientists, doctors or whoever) are broadly in agreement, and their opinions are supported by the preponderance of evidence in the primary literature, there are plenty of cases where people will argue against this consensus of experts. These are the people who need to back up their arguments with data. The sceptics’ side is already supported by the preponderance of the literature.

In cases like this, I don’t think the sceptics need to produce any new data at all. It is the responsibility of those denying the scientific consensus to familiarise themselves with the relevant data. If they choose not to, it betrays their lack of interest in really understanding the topic. If, in addition, they cannot produce any positive supporting evidence for their argument, it really illustrates that they are most probably wrong.

In an ideal world, there would be no need for scientists and sceptics to argue with the uninformed public about any science topic. In our world, however, this need exists, so let’s not make it an unreasonably difficult thing to find the time to do.

I’m glad someone in the video brought up my biggest concern. My phone stays in my pocket for much longer than it does by my head, so if there is any effect on the body, and a cause of cancer, it’s my equipment downstairs that I’d be worried about.

Thankfully there is no effect. I do plan to have children one day.

Another thing. That list of things we should be worried about verses things we worry about for no reason should be spread around. We need to sort out our priorities as a species.

@Lemuet#67: The great thing is you don’t have to be an expert in radio to determine whether or not the emissions from mobile phones causes cancer. You can compare the brain cancer *rates* (incidences per 10,000 of the population or similar) with the cell phone ownership and usage rates (available from telephone companies, though not available to the general public). If there is no significant correlation (and there is none), then you have to wonder what people are talking about when they make claims such as “mobile phones cause brain cancer.”

I think the bigger danger was completely missed here:
“6) Cell phone use has exploded worldwide…”
My god!!! Millions of exploding cell phones worldwide! I must get this out to everyone on my email list at once!

“b) Microwaves cook food, so they can change the nature of proteins. Could they change the structure of DNA too?”

From Wikipedia:

“A microwave oven works by passing non-ionizing microwave radiation, usually at a frequency of 2.45 gigahertz (GHz)—a wavelength of 122 millimetres (4.80 in)—through the food. Microwave radiation is between common radio and infrared frequencies. Water, fat, and other substances in the food absorb energy from the microwaves in a process called dielectric heating. Many molecules (such as those of water) are electric dipoles, meaning that they have a positive charge at one end and a negative charge at the other, and therefore rotate as they try to align themselves with the alternating electric field of the microwaves. This molecular movement represents heat which is then dispersed as the rotating molecules hit other molecules and put them into motion”

Ie, it’s (mostly)the water being heated(by the microwaves) that “cooks” the proteins, not the micro waves themselves.

@MadScientist: Regarding my post, I was mostly making fun of all the arguing but yes, that is the only conclusion I could come to. It is true tho that I don’t know anything about radio waves, but I also don’t believe in magic. To me it just seems like it all started with someone finding out he/she has cancer and trying to figure out why something like that would happen to them, desperately looking for the culprit. Once the word is out, it’s out. It’s the same as any rumor about anything, true or not, it will circulate. Killing a rumor is impossibly much harder to do than spread one. Now I can’t help but wonder if there are good studies about that? Lies vs doubts that stick around even after truth is revealed.

I was under the impression that studies conducted in the US and funded by cellphone companies found no correlation between cellphone use and brain cancer, while studies conducted in Europe and independently funded did find a correlation. Of course, correlation is not causation, but the fact that funding source apparently made a difference in the outcomes of the studies was worrisome.

Ok, I’m going to chime in here, since interactions between radiation and human tissue are exactly what I’m trained in (medical physics). I don’t mean to make an “argument from authority,” so I’ll explain my processes here so that you can follow them on your own if you choose.

First, let’s list all of the ways in which radiation can affect matter, and then see if the frequencies and intensities of cell phone radiation can have any possible effect on brain tissue in these respects. The list will be: ionization, disintegration, heating, and electromagnetic effects.

Ionization: This occurs when a photon of light is energetic enough to remove an electron from it’s bond to an atom. The energy of a photon is based on its frequency, and not at all on it’s intensity. In other words, if some radiation does not have a high enough frequency to ionize an atom, then the intensity doesn’t matter at all. This is called the photoelectric effect. There are some special materials that exhibit ionization energies in the infrared, but most require ultraviolet or higher. Cell phone radiation’s photon energies are orders of magnitude lower than infrared. There is no mechanism by which cell phone radiation can affect brain tissue via ionization.

Disintegration: This is one a lot of people neglect in these arguments. In molecules, interactions with a photon can break a bond between 2 atoms without ionizing (the atoms are no longer integrated – disintegration). Depending on the molecule, the photon energy required for disintegration can be lower than ionization energies, but still nowhere close to the photon energies in cell phone radiation. There is no mechanism by which cell phone radiation can affect brain tissue via disintegration.

Heating: Even without ionization or disintegration, atoms can still absorb the radiation and become heated by it. This is how microwave ovens work. In this case, it is the intensity that matters and not the photon energy. You can calculate the rate of temperature increase by taking the rate of energy absorption (power), divide by the “specific heat” of the material (the relation between energy and temperature for that material), and divide by the mass of the material. So if you assume the phone is emitting radiation at the maximum allowable power (will almost always be less), and that half of the emitted radiation passes through the head (more than reality), and that half of the radiation passing through the head is absorbed by the brain (WAY higher than reality), and divide that by a specific heat of 1 J/kg-C for brain tissue (don’t forget to convert the cell phone power to J/s first), and by the mass of the brain, then you’ll find the rate of temp increase is extremely minimal (small fracion of a degree per second). The circulation of blood and conductivity will easily disperse this tiny temperature increase as it occurs. There is no mechanism by which cell phone radiation can affect brain tissue via heating.

Electromagnetic effects: since the radiation is oscillating electric and magnetic fields, it can induce an electric potential in the material. These equations are a bit too complex for a blog comment, but the science is available all over the place if you look for it (taught in the first year of intro physics at most colleges). If you calculate the maximum change of magnetic flux through the brain and figure out the induced potential from that, then you can compare it to the potentials used in the neurons. Neurons at rest are held at -55 mV (that’s -0.055 V) and need to get to -70 mV to start the cascading process of the neuron firing. The calculation from earlier should yield a potential orders of magnitude too small to affect this neuron firing process. There is no mechanism by which cell phone radiation can affect brain tissue via electromagnetic effects.

In summary, physics currently has no process by which cell phones can come close to affecting the brain. To suggest otherwise is to suggest a revolution in our understanding of radiation. Couple that with the many results from studies confirming no effect, and the results are more than conclusive.

One last thing off topic: before the election Phil put on this blog a resalution about an alien affairs comission ,I said I’d be perfect for it because I,m a sci-fi fan I was only jokeing .I don’t think we need this kind of comission untill we find alien life then it should be made up of sciencetists mainly :Astronomers,bioligists,soceolist,medical doctors,engeners,and physists.

of all the things out there to be afraid of – snakes, ghosts, dentists, the sun, rugburn, clowns, night terrors, boards with nails in them, etc. cell phones seem like something not particularly worthy of fear – besides you could spend your whole life well shielded from cellphones behind your tin foil cap, only to step out your front door and be hit by a bus. use your cellphone to call your friends and arrange to go live your life a little.. and learn which things you should actually be afraid of, like that dang sun – that thing is a menace, somebody needs to do something about it (not me, though).

on the other hand, if science says an electron can pass through a non-conductive barrier for no reason other than “because we’re super good at math and you aren’t” – i don’t see why my cellphone can’t suddenly cause my head to violently explode upon pressing the send button… its really just a matter of probabilismic wave-faction pi charts and other equally confusing greek letters.

PS reading all 90+ comments on here non-stop start to finish has been a horrifying ordeal i hope to soon forget.

“5) There have been many careful studies looking at any connection between cell phones and health risks. None has been found.”

What concerns me is that Phil chose to blog on this but apparently didn’t do much research at all on the issue. A simple perusal through the comments on this blog turns up links to several articles which either claim a correlation between cell phone radiation and brain cancer themselves, or cites articles that do. So this statement of Phil’s would be patently false.

I remember one report of residents complaining about various health problems after a mobile-phone transmission tower was erected nearby, then it came out that the transmitter had not yet been switched on.

This is not to say that the tower didn’t cause their problems, but this could be psychosomatic.

Eh? That’s extremely low. Water has an SHC (specific heat capacity) of 4200 Jkg-1 °C-1. Brain cells are fatty, so they probably have a lower water content than most of our cells – and therefore might be around 60 % – 70 % water. So, how did you arrive at the figure of 1 Jkg-1 °C-1 for brain tissue?

Of course, if your figure is wrong and the SHC of brain tissue is far closer to that of water, the temperature increase will be lower than you estimate it to be.

(don’t forget to convert the cell phone power to J/s first),

So, that’d be Watts, then, right? Which is the unit in which the ERP of the phone will be measured in the first place.

Electromagnetic effects: since the radiation is oscillating electric and magnetic fields, it can induce an electric potential in the material. These equations are a bit too complex for a blog comment, but the science is available all over the place if you look for it (taught in the first year of intro physics at most colleges). If you calculate the maximum change of magnetic flux through the brain and figure out the induced potential from that, then you can compare it to the potentials used in the neurons. Neurons at rest are held at -55 mV (that’s -0.055 V) and need to get to -70 mV to start the cascading process of the neuron firing. The calculation from earlier should yield a potential orders of magnitude too small to affect this neuron firing process. There is no mechanism by which cell phone radiation can affect brain tissue via electromagnetic effects.

Your last sentence does not automatically follow from your penultimate sentence. There’s more to brain activity than mere neurons firing. For example, neurotransmitters interacting with receptors at synapses. This is largely an electromagnetic effect, but I have no idea if the flux induced in the brain by a cellphone is sufficient to influence it. Other intermolecular interactions within the brain cells will also largely be mediated by electromagnetic effects, but – again – I have no idea if the flux levels involved in cellphone use are sufficient to have any impact.

While I think your conclusion is probably right, your reasoning has gaps in it.

I have no doubt that some people associate their health problems unnecessarily to cell phone towers, however the issue was that roughly 10 staff in one building had cancers and brain tumours. Not quite psychosomatic health reports, as… well, serious and fatal illness in this case.

I’m only sceptical in the sense that I was aware of the goings-on behind the scenes of the event. Suffice to say it wouldn’t satisfy half of the people who read this blog.

@95 You’re right, I was typing this out kinda quickly and missed that (no idea what I was thinking at the time to say 1). With the correction, though, the rate of temperature increase is even LOWER. Thank you for the correction.

@96 As far as I know, the process you describe is responsible for changing the neurons’ potential difference to begin the potential change down the length of the neuron. So the flux through this area would still need to induce potentials on the millivolt scale to have an effect. And, regardless of this, studies have been done to find out the smallest magnetic effects that will change neuron activity, and it requires an MRI machine flipping its magnetic field from very high amplitudes. Cell phone radiation comes nowhere close. Thank you for your input.

This should lend itself to a fairly straightforward natural experiment. Given that 2 billion people in the world use cell phones, and different countries adopted cellular technology at different times and at different rates, we should be able to correlate cell phone usage to changes in any number of health conditions.

After all, if cell phone use has a 1 in 10,000 chance of giving you cancer per year, then quite literally *millions* of people have gotten cancer from cell phone use by now. That should show very clearly in public health literature.

Dammit Phil, your scientific approach to the issue of cell phone radiation is jeopardizing my attempt to make millions by selling wearable Faraday cages* to those who believe, in addition to their families and pets, that it poses a risk.

For 107: James, yes, for many chemicals it is known how they cause carcinogens. For others, it is clear they care carcinogens but the mechanisms are not known yet. The mechanism does NOT need to be known, for something to be recognized as harmful. Some chemicals cause cancer by breaking DNA. However, breaking the DNA is not needed to create cancer, and it is known, by now, that some chemicals introduce other changes, such as cytosine (one of the 4 bases in DNA) methylation or protein acetylation, which are modifications that do NOT break DNA but induce serious biological modifications that lead to cancer. These are collectively known as “epigenetic” changes, and were shown to by involved in the carcinogenesis caused by benzene, smoke, asbestos, and nickel, among other chemicals. Those ignorant people who still argue that no carcinogenesis is possible without breaking the DNA, are just plain uninformed creatures, because the biomedical literature has 10,000 articles on the topic and a few impressive textbooks.

One thing that I find peculiar is the phantom leg twitch. I have done a little experimenting myself and found a few things about it (can’t find anything good about it on the internet).

1)I used to always have my phone on silent at work, and that is when this started. My leg twitches when it is ringing.
2)It also twitches when the phone decides to check in with the nearest tower. This is what I think most people are dealing with when they have “phantom vibration syndrome.” Because a cellphone will sometimes check in with a nearby tower.
3)The strangest part (which I read other anecdotes about as well) is that sometimes your leg will do it without the phone being in the pocket. If my phone is not even in the house, my leg will twitch. If my phone is nearby I will definitely get a twitch.

I doubt that this causes cancer as well but I certainly think it is strange. The strangest part to me is that this never used to happen, but the more I have my phone in the pocket the more often I get the twitch. It’s as if my leg slowly acclimates to the twitch.

One final thing I want to point out for any neasayers, For the time that I had to have my phone on silent at work, I actually *relied* on my leg twitch to know if I was getting a call. So I can guarantee that this isn’t some psychological thing.

Jake: it makes perfect sense, thanks for sharing, and lots of people are describing the same.
It is important to realize that the body is, in fact, an electromagnetic system, and it responds to electromagnetic impulses. The other important thing is that there is something called inter-individual variability, which the authors of the above study conveniently does not mention, because he has serious gaps in knowledge as far as biology is concerned. But people respond differently to the same environmental exposure. This is why I am able to eat peanuts others are not, this is why some people unfortunately die from penicillin or a wasp sting, this is why some feel the twitch. Some people, a certain percentage in the population, react to radio frequency radiation, this has been documented in many countries, and there is only a bunch of ignorant people who call themselves “skeptics”, who do not believe it.

The real question is, how are the tans of the people who are worried about cell phones? Do they always wear long sleeves, pants, and broad-brimmed hats that block UV radiation when they go outside? Because UV radiation causes cancer, definitively, powerfully, and if cell phones were half as harmful we’d see an effect in every study without difficulty. So before you throw out your cell phone you should avoid the sun, and certainly not tan intentionally. If you aren’t as pale as your natural coloring will allow, you’re harming yourself more than a cell phone does already.

Gus Snarp: stupid nonsense, sorry. Tanning is by ionizing radiation, cell phones have non ionizing radiation, and different biological processes are sensitive to these to different extents. Open a book and document yourself before writing nonsense. Obviously you are ignorant, sorry.

Rick, you miss the point entirely. I could just as well have mentioned eating grilled meat or smoking cigarettes. People take risks with known carcinogens all the time, deciding for whatever reason that the benefits outweigh the risks. Cell phones, if there is any risk, are far less risky. If they were as dangerous as the things noted above, the link would have been easily proven by now. Exactly how each of these things cause cancer matters not a whit, what we know is that we can do studies that immediately reveal just how dangerous these risks are because the effects are so strong that they are readily seen. It makes no sense to stop using a cell phone because inconclusive studies suggest it might cause cancer and then go lay out in the sun and smoke a cigarette while you grill up some steak for dinner.

If non-ionizing radiation from cell phones isn’t dangerous then look it up!!! If you type in,” Does Non-ionizing radiation damage living cells or tissue,” this answers it! SDSU in San Diego has a brain cancer cluster. Type in,” SDSU Brain Cancer Cluster,” and you can see many links! There is a Cell Tower on the campus where all of these cancers have occurred! A Woman just died August 29th, 2010 on top of the ones mentioned in these articles! There is a cell tower outside of this building that is mentioned as a,’ Sprint,’ Tower. It is really a HPWREN, ( High Performance Wireless Research and Educational Network ), a Backbone Node to the UCSD campus! It is also a Tetra Tower for Homeland Security and HAARP. These towers are on many school properties across the U.S. EMF’s are extremely DANGEROUS! If anyone tell you differently I would look into their back ground to see if Industry sways their opinions! The New,’ Blackberry Torch,’ manual says to keep .98 inches from your head and for Pregnant Woman and Teenagers to avoid putting these devices near their lower abdomens!!!! If Cell Phones are SO SAFE, why the warnings? Just look at your cell phone manual! They ALL tell you to keep these away from your heads!!!

Yes, exclamation points are FAR more impressive than linking to actual studies.

Why the warnings? Did you know coffee cups from stores come with warnings that the contents are hot? Evidently, some people are too stupid – and prone to using law suits – so the companies give fair warning. Whether there is actual danger in their products or not.

This should lend itself to a fairly straightforward natural experiment. Given that 2 billion people in the world use cell phones, and different countries adopted cellular technology at different times and at different rates, we should be able to correlate cell phone usage to changes in any number of health conditions.

Unfortunately, no.

Many other lifestyle changes could equally correlate with initiating cellphone use. If your study shows up a correlation, it only suggests that one or more of the lifestyle changes links to the condition. It doesn’t necessarily mean that cellphone use causes the condition.

Check you cell phone manuals !!!!! They already tell you NOT to put these devices near your heads!!!! The new,” Blackberry Torch,” manual says to keep at LEAST .98 inches from your heads and for Pregnant Woman and Teenagers to AVOID putting these devices near you lower abdomens!!! Not only do cell phones cause BRAIN cancer, they are the culprit in many many CANCERS!!!! Look up,” Does Non-Ionizing Radiation Damage Living Cells or Tissue,” and there is your answer!!! Cell Phones, Wi-Fi, and Cell Towers are ALL VERY DANGEROUS!! Follow the MONEY!!!! If someone says that these are safe, see who they are being paid by!!! Every Scientific Study that is NOT conducted by Industry Shows a direct correlation between cell phones and brain cancer!!! Wise – UP!

@80- THANK YOU! I was going to explain to Dave that microwave ovens do not use microwaves to cook the food, but that the microwaves excite the WATER which cooks the food.

@85- Again, thanks for a very nice discussion over different ways that radiation affects tissues.

@113- Allergens are an understood process and should not be compared to EM reactions in the body. Those are apples and oranges. Also, while it may be documented that some people have reactions to different EM frequencies, that doesn’t mean it causes cancer.

@116-Wow. I think Gus clearly understood the differences between non-ionizing and ionizing radiation, but was discussing the risk analysis that we all go through. You didn’t need to be so rude.

@121- Please, send out your sources? And as I tell my 6 year old, yelling (or writing in all capital letters) does not make your argument right.
Of course cell phone manuals put in over restrictive suggestions. That is called Covering your ass for future lawsuits.

Phil- Sorry, but I disagree with #7 . It really should be:

The are no studies which support a causal relationship between cell phone radiation and brain tissue damage.

LISTEN TOO ME,” CELL PHONES CAUSE BRAIN CANCER.” I’ve had the luxury of having some of the world’s most experts in this field!!! Cell Phones, Wi-fi, and Cell Towers are ALL dangerous! The reason no one believes this is because our Institutions such as the,’ American Cancer Society,’ is in bed with industry. The American Cancer Society has taken money from the Telecom Industry fpr lavish golf-tournaments! Once again, it is the tobacco to lung cancer issue All over again! Everyone knows that there is a link between cigarettes and development of lung cancer. Although no biological studies have positively proven it! The same for Cell Phones!!! Not only are cell phones dangerous, anytime someone use these devices, they are contributing to our Environment in a nagative way! You know, cell phones don’t work by magic!! The Cell Tower poliforation in this country is horrendous! We are disrupting the migration of birds, and the bee population is disappearing! Also, like I wrote before, there was another brain cancer death on the SDSU campus in San Diego. A Woman died August 29th, 2010. 4 people in 2 years who were all in the same area. This cell tower is disguised under, ” SPRINT.” These towers go by, TETRA, GWEN, HAARP. and HPWREN! They are used for Homeland Security. They are disguised under the NSF, or National Science Foundation. These towers are on several campuses throught the U.S.. How many people will die before the nay sayers catch on? There are Neurosurgeons across the U.S., that are coming out about cell phones and brain cancer. Dr. Keith Black, Dr. Tantuwaya from Poway, Dr. Santosh Kesari from Moores UCSD cancer center, etc.!! The other reason that they get away with it is that many of the studies are paid for by the Industry. Any study done by scientists who don’t work for the industry, have all found damage to brain cells. Like I said,” Does Non-Ionizing Radiation damage living tissues or cells.” There is the answer!!!!

If cell phones don’t cause brain tumors, then why does every cell phone manual tell you not to put these to your heads. The new,” Blackberry Torch,” manual says to keep .98 inches from your heads and teenagers and pregnant women to avoid putting these near their lower abdomens. Industry Studies always show an insignificant danger while Independent Scientific Studies approximately show a 75% danger. Always look up who did the study, and who they were paid by! The telecom industry has many tenticles just like brain cancer itself. Don’t be foolish, and rely on a 4 Trillion dollar industry! The American Cancer Society takes many querks from the telecom industry. They don’t want to cure cancer, of course not! This will be,” Big Tobacco,” all over again. Please do your research into these reports! The Interphone Study had many flaws. One of which many of the participants either became too ill or died to finish this study. A regular cell phone user was someone using a cell phone for 30 minutes a day or 1 hour per month! STILL it shows that with > 10 years of cell phone use there is a 40% risk increase for Glioma development. This cancer is called the,” Terminator,” and survival is within the months category! GET INFORMED!!!

CELL PHONES, WIFI, CELL TOWERS, AND SMART METERS CAN ALL CAUSE CANCER! READ YOUR CELL PHONE MANUALS. THE NEW,’ BLACKBERRY TORCH,’ SAYS TO KEEP .98 INCHES FROM YOUR HEADS AND FOR TEENAGERS AND PREGNANT WOMEN TO AVOID PUTTING THESE NEAR THEIR LOWER ABDOMENS. THE,’ INTERPHONE,’ STUDY RELEASED IN MAY 2010 HAD MANY FLAWS! A REGULAR CELL PHONE USER WAS SOMEONE WHO USED A CELL PHONE 30 MINUTES PER DAY, 1 HOUR PER WEEK AND 1 HOUR PER MONTH! CANADA’S PORTION OF THIS STUDY WAS 100% PAID FOR BY THE TELECOM INDUSTRY. MANY OF THE PARTICIPANTS EITHER BECAME TOO ILL OR EVEN DIED! GBM BRAIN CANCER HAS SURVIVAL WITHIN MONTHS, USUALLY 6-9 MONTHS! THE INTERPHONE STUDY STILL SHOWS A 40% RISK INCREASE FOR BRAIN TUMOR DEVELOPMENT WITHIN 10 YEARS OF A REGULAR CELL PHONE USER! FOR SOMEONE TO PUT THIS AS A TITLE, IS IRRESPONSIBLE! WHOEVER THIS GUY IS ON THIS VIDEO ( TRUST ME ), HAS BEEN PAID OFF BY THE TELECOM INDUSTRY. READ THE,” SELETUN STATEMENT,” AND JUST LAST WEEK THE WHO, WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION RATED CELL PHONES AS A CLASS 2B CARCINOGEN! DDT IS A CLASS 2 CARCINOGEN! I WAS ALSO INFORMED THAT THIS IS HUGE, BECAUSE THE WHO IS VERY CAUTIOUS. THIS WAS AN,’ ACROSS THE BOARD CONSENSUS! CELL PHONES WERE NEVER PRE-MARKET TESTED! IF YOU KEEP USING YOUR PHONE, I WARNED YOU! I HAVE A PERSONAL STORY ABOUT THIS AND I’M TRYING TO SAVE AS MANY LIVES AS POSSIBLE. GOVENOR HICKENLOOPER FROM COLORADO DECLARED THE MONTH OF MAY AS,’ MCS,’ OR MULTIPAL CHEMICAL SENSITIVITY. LOOK UP,” ELECTROSENSITIVE SYMPTOMS,” AND TAKE CARE OF YOURSELVES AND YOUR FAMILIES!

IF CELL PHONES DON’T CAUSE BRAIN CANCER, THEN WHY, HAS ISREAL JUST ANNOUNCED THAT THEY ARE WARNING CONSUMERS ABOUT THESE DEVICES!!! READ YOUR CELL PHONE MANUALS, THEY SAY,’ NOT,’ TO PUT THESE DEVICES NEAR YOUR HEADS AND BODIES!! BLACKBERRY TORCH: KEEP .98 INCHES FROM YOUR HEADS AND BODIES AND FOR PREGNANT WOMEN AND TEENAGERS TO AVOID PUTTING NEAR THEIR LOWER ABDOMINS! PLEASE WATCH: T-MOBILE, VERIZON, SPRINT AND AT&T CELL PHONE COMMERCIALS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THEY NO LONGER SHOW CELL PHONES TO THE HEADS OR BODIES!!! WHOEVER WRITES THAT CELL PHONES ARE SAFE, LOOK INTO THEIR FUNDING!! FOLLOW THE MONEY!!! CELL PHONES, CELL TOWERS, WIFI, SMART OR AMI METERING BEING DEPLOYED ON OUR HOMES AND BUSINESSES ARE ALL NON-IONIZING RADIATION. NON-IONIZING RADIATION IS A CLASS 2B CARCINOGEN BY THE WHO OR WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZTION!!!! THIS CLASSIFICATION WAS VERY CLOSE TO BEING A CLASS 2A CARCINOGEN!! I LOST A SON FORM GBM BRAIN CANCER AND NOT ONLY DID OUR NEUROSURGEON TELL US IT WAS HIS CELL PHONE, MY SON’S STORY WAS INSTRUMENTAL IN THE WHO WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATIONS CLASSIFICATION OF 2B.
1 HOUR OF WIFI IS EQUAL TO 20 MINUTES OF CELL PHONE EXPOSURE – CINDY SAGES BIOINITIATIVE REPORT!!!! DON’T BE A FOOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

the,’ interphone study,’ that was released a couple of years ago had many flaws!! A Heavy cell phone user is someone using a cell phone for 30 minutes per day. This is ludicris!!! Many of the brain cancer participants either became too ill to continue this study or died!! Cordless phones were not included, but just as dangerous as a cell phone!!! YET, this study still showed a significant increase for brain tumor development!! DO YOUR HOME WORK!! THE WHO- WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION CLASSIFIES NON-IONIZING RADIATION AS A CLASS 2B CARCINOGEN!! THIS CLASSIFICATION WAS VERY CLOSE TO BEING A CLASS 2A CARCINOGEN. IT ISN’T A MATTER OF IF, BUT WHEN THIS WILL OCCUR!! THIS IS A 4 TRILLION DOLLAR BUSINESS WITH MANY TENTICLES JUST LIKE THE CANCER ITSELF!! MANY STUDIES WITH THESE DANGERS HAVE BEEN BOUGHT AND SOLD!! WAKE-UP!!!